


Pine Hill Mansion

by Burgie



Category: Star Stable
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7107958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burgie/pseuds/Burgie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa gets stuck inside the greenhouse at Pine Hill Mansion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Lisa waited exactly five seconds before climbing through the hole in the wall. Starshine had counted.

“Wait here for me,” she told him. “I’ll just have a little look around.”

“It’s not like I have a choice,” said Starshine. “Be careful.”

“I will,” said Lisa. She made her way through the maze easily, climbing over the smaller hedges rather than weaving her way through them. Something jabbed into her thigh as she swung her leg over one hedge, and she hissed in pain. And then she swore loudly as the wound tore open.

Starshine whinnied from outside where he waited.

“Lisa, are you alright? What happened?” Starshine called, and Lisa could feel little pangs of pain as he scraped at the wall with his hoof.

“Yeah, I’m okay!” Lisa called back to him. Surely her magic would work on herself. To her relief, it did. It still left a large patch of blood, though, and she limped the rest of the way through the maze. She felt slightly dizzy, too, and faint. It was strange that the front doors were unlocked. Security must be pretty lax in this place, and yet it didn’t appear to have been looted. That was strange. Maybe country towns were just different to the big city. She looked up and the world turned grey.

“Wake up!” Starshine’s voice brought her back, and Lisa found herself lying on the rug inside the mansion. Her head was still spinning but she pulled herself up with a groan. There seemed to be more blood than there had been before.

“Please just be a normal thing,” Lisa begged her body. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even a normal thing like a wound reopening. It was the darkness. But what had the darkness been doing on a hedge?

“I don’t like this,” said Starshine. “Come back and wait for Linda with me.”

“No,” said Lisa. She concentrated on expelling the darkness with a white healing light and managed to heal her injury, gasping in relief once it was done. She felt more energised now, and stood easily.

Lisa looked around the room, staring in curiosity at the paintings. They looked like herself and her new friends (well, ‘friend’ was a strong word for one of them), and they felt like them, but they couldn’t have been them. The hair was all wrong, for one thing.

“Well, that’s weird,” she concluded. The doors looked more promising. One of them had a star on the knob, and it turned easily under her touch.

She walked through a short hallway and found herself in a greenhouse. This part of the house actually looked like it wasn’t visited regularly or at all. There was a broken pane of glass with a big hole in it, the pond was a stagnant swamp, and the plants were either overgrown or dead.

Lisa made her way over to some stairs that led up to a small platform. They looked rickety but surely they’d hold. She ran up them anyway, just in case one broke and sent her plummeting to the ground.

The stairs did break, but only after Lisa had already climbed up them. She watched from the platform as the stairs suddenly started to fall from halfway up.

“Well, fuck,” she said. There was nothing else she could say to that.

“Now what happened?” asked Starshine.

“The stairs collapsed,” said Lisa. “But don’t worry, I’m not hurt this time. I feel fine, actually.” Well, physically, anyway. Now that she was trapped, she began to think about the mansion. What did the paintings mean? What had happened to the former occupants? And who lived there now? Maybe if they came home they could help her, but if the new residents were bad…

And then there had been the darkness on the hedge. That wasn’t exactly comforting. Lisa chewed on her bottom lip and searched through her pockets for her phone. With any luck, Linda would arrive before the owners of the mansion did.

Lisa knew that she’d really screwed up this time. She’d gone snooping around an abandoned mansion that was probably haunted for all she knew, and on her own. And now, because of her mistakes, she’d wound up in trouble. She wiped away her tears when her phone beeped with a message from Linda.

“I’m coming. Stay there.”

“Not like I can go anywhere,” said Lisa with a laugh. She was back to waiting, but she felt better now with the knowledge that Linda was coming to rescue her.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa returns to Pine Hill with Anne, and this time meets the occupants

The first time that Lisa had gone to Pine Hill mansion, she hadn’t waited for her friend. And she’d gotten stuck as a result. So this time, she was determined to wait for her friend. Although if her friend didn’t hurry up and get through the maze, she was going to leave her out there.

“Hurry up, Anne!” she called to her. “The mystery of the mansion awaits.”

“Unlike some people, I have long hair to get stuck in branches,” Anne huffed, finally appearing out of the hedge maze with sticks and leaves in her hair.

“How?” asked Lisa. “There was one tree and it was bare.”

“I stepped on a small branch and tripped,” said Anne. She glared at Lisa, daring her to laugh. Which of course she did, because how could someone not laugh at that?

“Maybe you should’ve been looking where you were going and wearing better shoes,” said Lisa. “I did tell you to wear something appropriate.”

“Quiet,” said Anne. “Let’s go inside.” She led the way across to the front door, picking leaves and twigs out of her hair as she went.

While Anne looked admiringly around at the entrance room, Lisa looked for ways to unlock the other doors.

“So strange,” said Anne, “this almost looks like a portrait of me. And this one looks like Alex if I painted her.” She blushed and looked quickly at Lisa to see if she’d heard. She didn’t look like she had, considering the fact that she had all of her attention focused on the doors at the top of the stairs.

“Do you have a bobby pin?” asked Lisa, still staring at the door. “I’m no Alex but I might be able to pick this lock.”

“And why would you assume that I have one?” asked Anne.

“Because you’re a total girl like that. Give me one.” Lisa held her hand out and Anne reluctantly handed over one of her many bobby pins. She was going to break it, probably. And the door as well.

To Anne’s surprise, the door opened.

“Ta.” Lisa handed the bobby pin back to Anne and walked through into the hallway that opened up behind the door. All of the doors along this hallway were open, and Anne peered in through the doorways as she passed. 

One of the rooms had musical instruments in it. Most of them were covered with sheets, but Anne could make out the shapes beneath them. A harp, a large piano, and some smaller brass instruments.

“I wonder what happened here,” said Lisa. “It looks peaceful enough so far.”

“I don’t know,” said Anne. “Some people say that the former occupants died.”

“Or they’re still haunting it.” At some point Lisa had moved behind her, and now she jumped on her with a roar.

Anne screamed and punched her.

“Don’t scare me like that,” she said. She leaned against the wall, heart hammering, clutching her chest.

“Sorry,” said Lisa, laughing and looking as not-sorry as a person could look. “Ow, you punch hard.” She touched her cheek. “That’ll leave a bruise.”

“Good,” said Anne. She walked ahead through the hallway, still glancing into rooms from time to time.

They searched in silence for a wall, Anne still sulking and fuming in turns, and Lisa just interested in whatever she found. She found a book and put it in her backpack for Linda to look at later.

“Are you and Linda a thing?” asked Anne, seeing this.

“What? No,” said Lisa. “Why?”

“Oh, just asking. I just thought that- never mind.”

“No, tell me,” said Lisa.

“Alright but if you tell anyone else…” Anne warned.

“I promise,” said Lisa. “I won’t tell anyone what you tell me now.”

“Not even Starshine?” asked Anne. “If you really talk to him, that is.”

“God, you’re a bitch. No, I won’t tell him.” Lisa folded her arms across her chest and looked at Anne with a glare. “You date a guy even though someone else is clearly in love with you. Who does that?”

“What are you talking about? Alex? Oh, now this is funny,” said Anne with a giggle. “Of course I know that she likes me, dear. I like her too.”

“So then why are you with Josh?” asked Lisa. 

“You didn’t let me finish, I was just about to explain that,” said Anne. “Josh is my fake boyfriend. I pretend to date him while really dating Alex.”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense,” said Lisa. “At my old school, lots of guys did that. Had fake girlfriends, I mean.”

“Yes. So you are free to go after Josh if you wish,” said Anne.

“I don’t like him,” said Lisa. “I don’t even like guys. I’m like Alex.”

“No one is like Alex,” said Anne. “She’s definitely one of a kind. So who do you like?”

“I’ve only been here a few weeks,” said Lisa. “I don’t like anyone. How long have you been with Alex?”

“Remember when you had Josh give Alex my number?” said Anne. “Since then. We made the arrangement that day.”

“Was that the plan all along?” asked Lisa.

“No,” said Anne. “I was supposed to get together with Josh but clearly Alex had other ideas.” She smiled and played with her hair.

They continued through the upper floors of the mansion until they found a study that looked well-used. So well-used, in fact, that there was a still-warm cup of coffee sitting on the desk.

“What are you two doing here?” asked Sabine, appearing at the attic stairs that they’d just climbed.

“Just leaving,” said Lisa. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” said Sabine. “You got me in a good mood so I’m going to let you go. Shoo. Before my father returns.”

“That was strange for Sabine,” said Anne as they made their quick escape out the front door.

“She probably heard what you said,” said Lisa. “She knows that you’re with Alex.”

“Oh, hell,” said Anne. “She’d better not tell anyone.”

“And why not?” Sabine leaned out the attic window, smiling down at them. “Daddy would hit the roof if he found out that his precious little daughter is a d-“

“If you say that word I will come back up there and hit you,” said Lisa, gesturing angrily at her.

Sabine grinned. She appeared about to say something but then withdrew her head and pushed the window back down.

“Why did she stop?” asked Lisa. “She wouldn’t normally stop, would she?”

“Because she’s there,” said Anne, pointing to a white figure in another window. “Sabine would never be mean to her own sister. Well, not that mean, anyway.”

“Time to go?” asked Lisa.

“Yes,” said Anne. “Preferably before their father returns.”

“Father?” asked Lisa.

“Mr Sands. My God, you really are new,” said Anne. “And while I’m correcting you, I’m not what Sabine was about to call me. I do like boys as well.”

“Yeah, I figured that,” said Lisa. “Are you ever going to stop being a bitch to me?”

“Are you ever going to stop being crazy?” asked Anne. She laughed. “Only joking. I am just teasing you, you know.”

“Well, stop,” said Lisa. “I don’t like it.”

“I am being honest,” said Anne. “It’s hardly my fault that it comes off sounding bitchy. Besides, it’ll be good for you to become so familiar with your flaws that you start making fun of them too.”

“Yes it is your fault,” said Lisa. “Bitch.”

“Sook,” said Anne. She made her way towards the hedge maze and then stopped to let Lisa take the lead, considering the fact that she’d been here before.

Inside the mansion, Sabine went to her sister’s bedroom and knocked on the door before entering.

“Not the best way to find out, huh?” she said to the pile of sadness on the bed.

“She moved on,” said Katja from beneath her blankets. “And I had to find out from her new girlfriend.” She sniffled.

“Yeah, it sucks. But she was never going to take you back anyway after what you did,” said Sabine.

“If you’re not going to be helpful, get out,” said Katja. “I can feel my heart breaking.”

“Oh, do not start with the emo stuff,” said Sabine with a sigh. 

There was a giggle from underneath the blankets. And then: “It’s like she was my light and I can’t live without her and without her my life is meaningless.”

Sabine left the room quickly. As soon as the door closed behind her, Katja stopped smiling and went back to her misery. She really did feel heartbroken. The ache in her chest was familiar and she hated it. She hated crying and looking weak, but she was now. And she couldn’t stop. How was she supposed to compete with a princess?


End file.
